Urban Homesteading - Path to Freedom

Saw a piece about this family last night - living on their own homestead with chickens, ducks, goats and raising all their own food right in the city. Apparently, it can be done - you can have it all.

http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/tag/nightline/

I just pulled up the site, it looks very interesting, I will spend more time looking at it tomorrow night or Sunday. Off to bed now so I am well rested for Sheri's planning party tomorrow!

I am trying to pin point this area, I spent most of my life in Pasadena.
From the 3rd grade to high school, live in the same house. and have been to many places that are no longer there. 3 schools, elem. jr.high and High school.
Also in my dumb years as a kid, broke into the Chaplin Mansion. which was torn down many years ago.
It has to be in the foothills, above the city. we had one aera that was calles Hippi canyon, one of my haunts, back in the days, wonder if its there.
To cool
Thanks Kathy
I will show this to my brother, LOL

That's really interesting.

Oh, probably late 1970 the BBC did a very popular comedy show on this very theme (I think inspired after the hit of John Seymour's grow organic book) here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/goodlife/index.shtml The show was based on the idea of a sophisticated urbane couple leaving their Ad jobs and turning their posh suburban house into a sustainable homestead. Still rerunning today - and still funny.

I like it, to bad I cant get it here.
Morning Laurie.
You get up and I go to bed. LOL

I know, like Katie said on one of the threads - sometimes it is hard to imagine the time differences. I'm off out to the greenhouse to do a bit of potting on - have 1000's of alpine strawberries to get on to bigger pots - planning on using them as ground cover in the wild area.

Yummmm work and munch.

That is if the mice don't get all of them first!

Laurie - loved your idea for Outta's garden - I can just picture it. She printed me a copy and I have it here to peruse at my leisure. "My greenhouse" was a much-used phrase today at lunch with her family, so she's got the idea in the works.

Food is costing so much these days that the idea of feeding yourself from your garden is certainly becoming more and more appealing to me. Why should I pay for substandard produce that's been shipped from across the state or country when a little time and planning from me can get me what I need at least for the summer.

Mary, it would be great if you could find out where in Pasadena these guys live. Wouldn't it be wild if they were in close to something you knew.

I don't think they're all that far out of town. When I used to read their website, I think I remember that they're on 3/4 of an acre, in town but with old zoning, and that they sell their produce to local restaurants.

If you look at the map, I think that is the Pasadena freeway, wish I could get a closer look. LOL
Its not where I thought it would be. If it is that close to the Rose bowl, My Aunt was that close, have to do more checking.

Katie - thank you, I'm pleased it went down well. Spent most of the day in the productive garden today - I just love it, it really feels like summer when I work there. Harvested the first of the artichokes, ate far too much asparagus at lunch and taking another kilo back to London for a neighbour, also harvested the first of the lettuce. fingers crossed, with a good warm week we should be eating the first of the French Breakfast Radishes next week! And two varieties of tomato are in blossom (I'm trying out some cool season earlies this year).

I do reccommend planting up your own vegetables just for the sheer pleasure of harvesting. But do make room for a cutting bed too - that's not cuttings as in propagation (that's in the nursery beds) but cutting as in a vase full of flowers. During the summer I absolutely fill the house with flowers - the beds are really productive: annuals, perennials, and roses and armloads of Paeonies without robbing the rest of the garden. Its wonderful! What an indulgence! I'm taking Paeonies with Heuchera, Aquilegia and a couple of stalks of early Delphiniums this week. With a few Iris Siberica just to give it a bit of skyscraper quality. I've been working on the cutting bed for about 4 years now, trying to extend the season and mix - but I think I may still hit a low in July with fairly slim picking then. I'll have to think about that a bit more.

Hope all the plans spur Sheri and Tim into heights of imagination!

Laurie, that just sounds scrumptious. I've always said that as a rich and famous person I'd have fresh flowers throughout the house every day. Now I have cats, so I'd need vases with anchors on the bottom and cages on the top. LOL .

Hoping some day to have a version of what you're doing myself - with hydrangeas and bulbs included in the mix. Iris siberica is a great idea. It's my favorite of the irises - delicate and refined, but unique.

I need to see some pictures of the cutting bed, Laurie. Maybe just one?

I will do that - although I'm not sure at what quality. I've tried photographing it a couple times but it looks so dull. somethings are just too functional to make good photos.

I know what you mean about that. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I just love the idea of the cutting bed (and I'm rapidly warming to the idea of the asparagus bed - just a sand box really, right?).

Asparagus beds are wonderful - and yes, if you've got sandy soil you are streets ahead! But they will take what ever is going as long as you dig in a good pile of compost/manure to give them some drainage and a nice hump to sit on.

Location: The red star is their homestead. Downtown-ish. I graduated from PCC.

I have lots of clay and my brother and SIL live on a lot that seems to have been filled with sand. We were talking about doing a soil trade. LOL

Beth, thanks for the map!!

Looks like it's near the Colorado Street Bridge, which gave me nightmares when I was a kid. That was even before I found out about the people that committed suicide off of it.

Thanks Beth for the map, I know where it is now, its is just about a 1/2 mile from my aunts house, my cousin and I use to ride our bikes all over that area, and I do know Suicide bridge, that is what we called it.
My aunt or should I say us kids, would sell parking places in her yard for the Rose Bowl Games, and we stayed up all nite the day before the parade. then slept all day durning the game. I left there in 1969 and went to Nevada.
When where you there?

I left there (Glendale, actually) in the 80's. I remember going to college in Pasadena and the air was so thick with smog that it hurt to breathe. I miss the Norton Simon and the Huntington Gardens...and the mountains were pretty in the winter. I don't miss the crowds and the traffic. The Rose Bowl swap meet was fun, but wall to wall people!

My bro and I took a trip to Calif. in 2006 to see our Mom, she lives in Palmdale. So we decided to go to Disneyland. and would head for home (here) and make a side tour to see are old house. We lived across the street from Arcadia ( no lie) our road was the dividing line.
Could not believed it, our house look like a dump, and driving up Colorado Blvd. Some of the places we knew we still there, but allot of new growth. When we lived there the 210 stop at Foothill & Michillinda
That was are street, was named that way back many moons ago by the 3 people that first lived on it, one was my great uncle. the word means: Michigan, Illinois and Indiana.

That's some great history. I wonder if the people living there know why the street is named that. My aunt & uncle still live on Marengo in South Pas.

I really dought it. My late uncle own the hole block, which was 4 houses and 3 where sold then tore down and built new ones, the only one still standing was ares.